Exetel

Exetel Pty. Ltd.
Private
Industry Telecommunication
Founded Sydney, Australia (29 August 2001)
Headquarters Sydney, Australia
Area served
 Australia
Key people
  • Richard Purdy, CEO
  • Annette Linton, Chairman
  • Raymond Li, CIO
  • Vitek Piestrzynski, CTO
  • Stuart Adamson, CFO
Services
Revenue
  • A$55,000,000+ (2009-10)
  • A$61,000,000+ (2010-11 estimate)
Number of employees
 170
Website www.exetel.com.au

Exetel is an Australian ISP which provides ADSL, web hosting, VoIP, and other internet services to customers across Australia. Exetel's headquarters are based in offices in North Sydney and its switching centre is in a secure Data Centre facility in the Sydney CBD. Exetel has 110,000+ residential and business customers.

Exetel resells products from NBN Co, Telstra, Optus, Verizon Business, AAPT & BigAir. Many of the larger Australian ISPs have chosen to deploy their own infrastructure (including wireless) in order to provide faster and less expensive services than Telstra offers. Exetel does not deploy its own infrastructure outside of its own switching centres. Instead, it is a wholesale customer of Tier 1 wholesale telco providers who provide IP Transit, Intercapital Transmission and various Residential and Business Grade Access Network products that Exetel integrate and manage for its customers.

Exetel donates one third of the profit it makes to various, community based, endangered species protection and regeneration programs around Australia. Almost $450,000 was donated in 2009. Details on all of these programs can be found on the website.[1]

History

Exetel began operating in the early 1990s as a technology consulting company, providing technical and management consulting services until December 2003. At that time the Exetel administration decided to become a service provider of data and telephone communications services.[2]

It began offering ADSL1 services in mid-February 2004, SHDSL corporate services in April 2004 and wireless broadband through Unwired in June 2004. Towards the end of 2004 Exetel added wire line telephony services using the Verizon network and mobile services using the Vodafone network. Exetel activated its own VoIP switches in March 2006 and began offering ADSL2+ services on 20 July 2006.

Exetel now has PoPs in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory and Auckland.[3]

On 18 November 2007 Exetel was included in the Deloitte's Rising Star listings as one of the fastest growing 50 Australian technology companies with a cumulative growth of 159% in that two-year period.[4]

Currently Exetel employs 60 people in its North Sydney office, and over 120 people in its Sri Lankan office and its revenue in the 2009–10 financial year was a little over A$55,000,000 compared with revenue of a little over A$49,000,000 in the 2008–09 financial year. Exetel has been profitable in each of its years of operation to date and is on track to meet its profit forecasts for the current financial year.

Exetel service offerings

General

Exetel offers the following internet related services:

Bandwidth management

Exetel has over 30Gbit/s of bandwidth linking its customers to Exetel and over 30Gbit/s+ of bandwidth linking Exetel to national and international internet networks. Multiple 1Gbit connections to PIPE Networks is also provided. Since it began operating Exetel has implemented various practices in an attempt in order to manage this bandwidth including the recent implementation of a Google cache.

Uncounted/off-peak period

When it began operating Exetel took the unusual step of providing users with significant "free" data in an attempt to manage its bandwidth more effectively. It actively encourages users to carry out their heavy downloads during what is currently called either the "uncounted" or "off-peak" period. Times and allowances during this period have also varied since the policy was first implemented in February 2004.[5][6] As of 21 July 2009 the off-peak period extends from midnight to midday AEST and the allowance within this period is 60GB per month.[6][7][8] This period and its allowance is available to all residential ADSL and ADSL2+ customers, except those on bundled ADSL plans or zero quota ADSL2+ plans.[6][7]

Despite there being a defined limit in the uncounted/off-peak period, Exetel does not actively prevent customers from downloading beyond that limit. While it used to discourage such action by placing users who exceed the limit in any month into separate bandwidth pools for the remainder of the month it, as of 1 February 2008, began applying excess charges to any downloads beyond the off-peak limit.[6][8][9]

As of 13 June 2015, there are new terms for broadband, NBN and mobile that do not include free data.[10]

Termination of customer accounts

In 2010, Exetel wrote to approximately 500 customers saying the company was "unable to continue to provide internet services to them" and were "asking them to move to another provider" [11]

In 2015, users were sent letters advising that Exetel had made "a commercial decision" to cease providing service to their address, with 30 days notice. [12] Although Exetel chief marketing officer Ben Colman stated that the users terminated were "heavy out-of-contract users", a discussion thread on Whirlpool Forums [13] saw many users who'd received the letters claim they weren't heavy users, and also users claim that they had offered to sign up with a new contract and been refused.

Endangered species conservation

Exetel support various endangered species projects, currently: Gouldian finch, black cockatoo, western ground parrot, long-nosed potoroo, red-tailed phascogale, regent honeyeater and spiny daisy conservation. They are also funding a Sri Lankan elephant/human conflict reduction programme. Exetel donate up to 33% of profits to these projects[14]

References

  1. ↑ "Protecting our wildlife". Exetel. 13 June 2015.
  2. ↑ "About us". Exetel. 13 June 2015.
  3. ↑ "Network Diagram". Exetel. Retrieved 23 June 2008.
  4. ↑ "Technology Fast 50 Australia 2007 – This year's shining stars" (PDF). Deloitte. 22 February 2008. Retrieved 23 June 2008.
  5. ↑ Adam Turner (13 August 2005). "Hatch a plan". The Age.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Exetel (plan pages)". Whirlpool. Retrieved 25 September 2007.
  7. 1 2 "Exetel's Residential Services". Retrieved 27 November 2007. (refer plan table pages)
  8. 1 2 "Changes To Exetel Broadband Plans". Exetel. 17 September 2008.
  9. ↑ "12 Midnight to 12 Noon 48 gb Reminder". Exetel. 1 February 2008. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
  10. ↑ "Terms". Exetel. 13 June 2015.
  11. ↑ "Exetel moves to terminate unprofitable accounts". PC World. 2 June 2010.
  12. ↑ "Exetel dumps 400 heavy broadband users". IT News. 12 June 2015.
  13. ↑ "Anyone else been dumped by Exetel?".
  14. ↑ "Protecting Our Wildlife". Exetel.

External links

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